In the House With No Doors
by Sarah Kay

we have given up on knocking.
Incoming! we say, with our eyes lowered for modesty,
or, Hello! or sometimes, Sorry, sorry!
You have to pass through everyone’s bedroom
to get to the kitchen. We only have two bathrooms.
As a courtesy, nobody will poop while you are showering,
but they might have to do their makeup or shave
if they are in a rush, if we have somewhere to be,
so you can recognize every person by their whistle
through a wet shower curtain, you haven’t seen your own face
on an unfogged mirror in weeks. It doesn’t matter,
self-consciousness has no currency here.
If you were nosy, I suppose the little bathroom trashcans
would spill their secrets to you, but why bother,
privacy is a language we don’t speak.
Someone is always awake before you,
the smell of coffee easing you into a today
they have already entered,
a bridge you will never need to cross first,
and no matter how latenight your owl,
there is always someone still awake
to eat popcorn with, to whisper your daily report to,
to compare notes on what good news you each caught in your nets.
In bed, you say, Goodnight! in one direction
and someone says it back, then turns and passes it,
so you fall asleep to the echo of goodnights down the long hallway
’til it donuts its way back around to your pillow.
Someone is doing a load of laundry,
if anyone wants to add some extra socks?
Someone is clearing the dishes,
someone has started singing Gershwin in the backyard
and you can’t help but harmonize,
and for a moment what you always hoped was true
finally is: loneliness has forgotten your address,
french toast browning on the stovetop,
the sound of everyone you love
clear as the sun giggling through the window,
not even a doorknob between you.

“I have an annual tradition which involves a large group of friends gathering together in a small house for a weekend. We are too old and there are too many of us to justify the way we cram into this tiny house—filling every corner, sleeping on couches and floors, and staying up too late, but it is a giddy, joyful weekend that refills my heart’s fuel tank for the whole year. This poem came out of imagining a world in which this was not a rare brief treat, but a state of togetherness I could inhabit.”
—Sarah Kay

https://mailchi.mp/poets/may-02-2023-poemaday-12137187?e=2706955217

#poem #poetry #poets #literature

At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor
BY SANDRA CISNEROS

These days I admit
I am wide as a tule tree.
My underwear protests.
And yet,

I like myself best
without clothes when
I can admire myself
as God made me, still
divine as a maja.
Wide as a fertility goddess,
though infertile. I am,
as they say,
in decline. Teeth
worn down, eyes burning
yellow. Of belly
bountiful and flesh
beneficent I am. I am
silvering in crags
of crotch and brow.
Amusing.

I am a spectator at my own sport.
I am Venetian, decaying splendidly.
Am magnificent beyond measure.
Lady Pompadour roses exploding
before death. Not old.
Correction, aged.
Passé? I am but vintage.

I am a woman of a delightful season.
El Cantarito, little brown jug of la Lotería.
Solid, stout, bottom planted
firmly and without a doubt,
filled to the brim I am.
I said the brim.

Poem of the day:
https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=58c6df03ad&u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=530384219c

#poem #poetry #poets #literature

On Being a Witness to History

https://lithub.com/joy-harjo-on-being-a-poet-and-witness-to-history

#poetry #literature #poets #poems

Joy Harjo on Being a Poet and Witness to History

The following speech was given at the NBCC Awards in New York City On March 23, 2023. Thank you, or mvto in our Mvskoke language. I am honored to be standing here before you, in person, to accept t…

The Tewkesbury Road..

It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,
Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither or why;
Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,
Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.

And to halt at the chattering brook, in a tall green fern at the brink
Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxgloves purple and white;
Where the shy-eyed delicate deer troop down to the brook to drink
When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.

O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,
Is a tune for the blood to jig to, and joy past power of words;
And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth
At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the birds.

John Masefield.( Poet, novelist, dramatist and journalist )
#poets

Poetry in a Time of War

https://lithub.com/in-the-hour-of-war-carolyn-forche-and-ilya-kaminsky-on-contemporary-ukrainian-poetry/

#poetry #poem #poems #poets #war #Ukraine

In the Hour of War: Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky on Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry

Our anthology, In the Hour of War, begins: Letters of the alphabet go to war and ends with I am writing / and all my people are writing. It includes poets whose work is known to thousands of people…

Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

  Does it dry up
  like a raisin in the sun?
  Or fester like a sore—
  And then run?
  Does it stink like rotten meat?
  Or crust and sugar over—
  like a syrupy sweet?

  Maybe it just sags
  like a heavy load.

  Or does it explode?

https://mailchi.mp/poetryfoundation/v83yod0ue3?e=58c6df03ad

#poem #poetry #poets

This Beautiful Planet
Dorothea Lasky

Please tell me that I was a good child
And that I did everything right
And that the atmosphere was exactly certain
I want you to love me
In ways that you never have
So that I become a forgotten world
With rainbow sunrises over dark green trees
And the cooling of the day
Becomes normal again
We will sit and watch the body of water
That we once called a sort of death
You know even in my dreams
You say I’ll never get it right
This is not a dream
We are burning here with no escape
But no matter how many times
They talk about the moon
It does not take a poet
To know that the moon
Is still only an illusion
Only an illusion
The moon calls out to all of us
Come back, it says
But we don’t hear it
Already on our way
To somewhere

“I’ve long been obsessed with the idea that our human experience is very unimportant when taken in the context of the endless magnitude of the universe. It’s both a comforting and terrifying reality. In terms of this poem, this reality is manifest in my current fear for our planet. Climate change dominates my thoughts most days. In many ways, this poem is a narration of this particular sort of existential anxiety. It is only through love and care of others that we can still have hope for our beautiful planet. I wish everyone on the planet reading this poem so much love.”
—Dorothea Lasky

https://mailchi.mp/poets/january-31-2023-poemaday-12136419?e=2706955217

#poem #poets #literature

Lifesaving Poems: Naomi Shihab Nye’s ‘The Art of Disappearing’

https://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2014/07/22/lifesaving-poems-naomi-shihab-nyes-the-art-of-disappearing/

#poem #poets #literature

Lifesaving Poems: Naomi Shihab Nye’s ‘The Art of Disappearing’

The Art of Disappearing When they say Don’t I know you?say no. When they invite you to the partyremember what parties are likebefore answering.Someone is telling you in a loud voicethey once …

Annabel Lee
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Happy Birtthday Edgar Allan Poe!

#poetry #poem #poets #literature

Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation

Edgar Allan Poe’s stature as a major figure in world literature is primarily based on his ingenious and profound short stories, poems, and critical theories, which established a highly influential rationale for the short form in both poetry and...

Half Lung
by Paul Newman
(yes, that Paul Newman)

Half my lung,
Removed by knife,
Is tightly packed in plastic now
Along with other waste
Then dumped somewhere on Staten Island
Or Jersey.

I had other plans for it of course.
The lung.
A state funeral along with the rest of me
Honoring a life of plunder well-spent.

Malignancy’s a funny thing though
And it had other plans.
I’m fearful
It was payback
For Silence.

Who needs a full lung
For a mouth clamped shut in fear
By politics no less.

I can remember, I think I can
When I was on the stump
On the shout full voice full fury
Pissing way above my rank—
Good Lord the arc of it—
On Them, their Crowns their Hair
Dripped yellow in their eyes. Yup.
Used to.

I throw a blanket of silence now
Over things I’ve built.

#poem #poets #literature

#Jimmorrison #poets #TheDoors #music https://youtu.be/3UdNs2LK7e4

Letter from Bachmann to Celan, Vienna, Christmas 1948. NOT SENT.

Dear, dear Paul!
Yesterday and today I thought a great deal about you – or about us, if you will. I am not writing to you because I want you to write again, but because it gives me pleasure and because I want to. I had also planned to meet you somewhere in Paris very soon, but then my stupid and vain sense of duty kept me here and I did not leave. What does this mean anyway – ‘somewhere in Paris’? I don’t know anything, but I do think it would have been lovely somehow!
Three months ago someone suddenly gave me your book of poems as a gift. I didn’t know it had come out. That was so… the ground was so light and buoyant beneath me, and my hand was trembling a little, just a very little bit.
[…] I still do not know what last spring meant. – You know me, I always want to know everything very precisely. – It was lovely – and so were the poems, and the poem we made together.
Today you are dear to me and so present. That is what I want to tell you at all costs – I often neglected to do so during that time.
I can come for a few days as soon as I have time. And would you want to see me? – One hour, or two.

Much, much love!
Yours
Ingeborg

Lettera di Bachmann a Celan, Vienna, Natale 1948. NON SPEDITA.

Caro, caro Paul!
Ieri e oggi ho pensato molto a te - o a noi, se vuoi. Non ti scrivo perché voglio che tu mi scriva di nuovo, ma perché mi fa piacere e perché lo voglio. Avevo anche programmato di incontrarti presto da qualche parte a Parigi, ma poi il mio stupido e vano senso del dovere mi ha trattenuto qui e non sono partita. Ma cosa significa "da qualche parte a Parigi"? Non so nulla, ma penso che in qualche modo sarebbe stato bello!
Tre mesi fa qualcuno mi ha improvvisamente regalato il tuo libro di poesie. Non sapevo che fosse uscito. È stato così... la terra era così leggera e fluttuante sotto di me, e la mia mano tremava un po', solo un pochino.
[...] Non so ancora cosa abbia significato la scorsa primavera. - Mi conosci, voglio sempre sapere tutto con molta precisione. - È stato bello - e anche le poesie lo erano, e la poesia che abbiamo fatto insieme.
Oggi mi sei caro e ti sento così presente. È questo che voglio dirti a tutti i costi - ho spesso trascurato di farlo in quel periodo.
Posso venire per qualche giorno appena ho tempo. E tu vorresti vedermi? - Un'ora, o due.

Con molto, molto affetto!
La tua,
Ingeborg

#letter #poets #love #Bachmann #Celan #English #Italian #translation

Ode to a Nightingale..

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
#JohnKeats #poets https://youtu.be/_pkQYLVqBms

"I will snooze with my dogs till I radiate love, for they are life’s true gurus."

Poetry by Sandra Cisneros -

https://granta.com/having-recently-escaped-cisneros/

#poem #poetry #literature #poets

Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the Year Anew | Sandra Cisneros | Granta

‘Life is not worth living / without salami.’ A poem by Sandra Cisneros.

Wonderful Poem I was made privy to

My Multiverses
by Heather Truett

https://abandonjournal.com/heathertruett/my-multiverses/

#poem #poets #literature

My Multiverses - Abandon Journal

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows? Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

MY FIRST DAY AS A PAINTER
by Jim Harrison

Things to paint:
my dog (yellow),
nude women,
dead coyote with gray whiskers,
nude women,
a tree full of crows,
nude women,
the self in the mirror,
nude women,
a favorite cloud,
nude women,
a worn-out scalpel,
nude women,
dead friends,
nude women ages 14–80 (12–82),
call me wherever you are at noon
in the glory of noon light,
bring your dogs and birds,
everybody is welcome:
nude women spinning in godlike whirls
creating each other in endless
streams of human eggs!

#poem #poets #literature

MINER POETS
by Jim Harrison

I am melancholy with fraudulence
of language. It is coal and we are miners
down in the blackness with weak lanterns,
a big chisel and sledge, some dynamite,
a baloney sandwich. We squash fingers
chipping off poems that silhouetted we hope will burn
spontaneously giving us a little light to live
by while remembering spring far above us,
the new lilacs the memory of which follows
us underground. The crystal pond that had
brook trout now clouded by mine tailings.
We disemboweled the earth and die without lungs.

#poem #poets #literature

We just lost Dean Young. Here’s an interview from a while back at NPR

https://www.npr.org/2011/05/23/136358656/the-heart-of-dean-youngs-pre-transplant-poetry

#poetry #poets #literature

Oh No, lost a wonderful poet

RIP Dean Young!

https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/in-memory-of-dean-young-1955-2022/

#poet #poetry #poets #poems

In Memory of Dean Young (1955–2022) - Copper Canyon Press

Copper Canyon Press is deeply saddened to share the news that Dean Young, former Texas poet laureate, William Livingston Chair of Poetry for University of Texas, and renowned educator, has passed away at the age of 67 at his home in Cincinnati,...

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant
BY BILLY COLLINS

I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book—José Saramago's Blindness
as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.

And I should mention the light
that falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches—
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=58c6df03ad&u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=1f530b3ebb

#poem #poetry #poets